


Something to Mend

by timetoboldlygo



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-15
Updated: 2013-04-15
Packaged: 2017-12-08 13:39:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/761947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timetoboldlygo/pseuds/timetoboldlygo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Grantaire never stays the night because he doesn't think he can stand to see the look on Enjolras's face when they wake up together. In which Enjolras doesn't particularly like R leaving before he wakes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something to Mend

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first work here - and man, do I wish it wasn't this!

Enjolras was a vision wrapped in sheets when Grantaire slipped out of bed. He was tempted to press a kiss to Enjolras’s forehead as he left, but he was too afraid that Enjolras might wake up, he was too afraid of the sentimentality. He kept that hidden inside and he knew that he didn’t do that well, but he did it well enough that Enjolras wasn’t aware of it.

Grantaire always woke up before Enjolras did, the morning after they fucked like this. Passion and heat, the memory of Enjolras’s fingers raking at his shoulders – the way they fit together at night – it all was worth nothing in the daylight and Grantaire knew it, had maybe even known it before the first time they’d slept together but knew it without a doubt when he woke up to this unfathomable look on Enjolras’s face.

At first, he’d needed an alarm, a watch that vibrated so Enjolras wouldn’t hear it. Now it was simple, easy even, for him to leave before Enjolras’s alarmed even sounded. It was really something – he’d never been an early riser before this.

Grantaire stumbled a little bit pulling on his jeans and cursed silently. He didn’t have time for this – he was late leaving today. It had been hard to pull himself away from Enjolras, who he’d found was extremely affectionate in sleep, twining his legs around Grantaire’s and curling close.

He hated himself every morning for leaving, but every time he did, he flashed back to that first night – or really, the morning after. Oh, he’d been ecstatic, when Enjolras had grabbed his shirt and smashed their lips together, but he wasn’t an idiot, he knew the terms of their – to put it delicately, their connection.

To put it roughly, it was just sex and it had been a mistake to hope for anything more that first morning when they’d woken up, and it hurt even more because he’d known it before he’d run out the door in his jeans and missing his jacket and socks.

So he left. Enjolras will call him back before the day ends, and it will repeat.

\-------

He cried, to Jehan – the only person who could cry to, really, the only one who will pet his head and not offer advice and simply just accept Grantaire the way he is, but Jehan was not perfect – or maybe it was, and that was way Courfeyrac was dating him – the point was, Jehan was always needed elsewhere and no one would put Grantaire first, so he left there too, back to his little apartment to simply wait.

He did a lot of that now, waiting. Waiting for things to happen to him, waiting to be called, waiting to be useful – that last one had never happened, likely it never would.

It’s not like people couldn’t tell that something’s wrong with him – he knew that Courfeyrac could tell something was eating away at him, but only Jehan knew the full details.

And Jehan, today, was like to do something about.

\----------

Jehan had a key to Enjolras’s apartment, but usually he knocked. Today was not a day for knocking, however, so he didn’t.

“What the fuck is the matter with you!” He said, slamming the door open.

Enjolras didn’t answer, which, considering the sort of person Enjolras was, was a huge surprise. Jehan found him face-down on the couch. “Are you sick?” He asked cautiously. He wasn’t going to yell at people when they were sick, even Enjolras, no matter what he was doing to Grantaire.

“No,” Enjolras said into the couch cushions. He wasn’t even dressed, really, clothed in boxers and a loose T-shirt that Jehan knew to be Grantaire’s. “I’m having a bad day.”

“A mental health day?”

“No,” Enjolras said. “It’s going to be a bad day. I can tell.”

Jehan was curious. “Why?”

“Grantaire didn’t stay the night,” Enjolras said.

This was clearly that had been eating at him for a while, otherwise Jehan never would have gotten this out of him so fast. “He never stays the night,” Jehan said dumbly. There’s something he was missing in all of this, and he didn’t like it.

“No,” Enjolras said, “He never does.”

\-----------

Grantaire was called back just before dinner, a quick text from Enjolras. Jehan had been quiet when he’d come home, sitting and reading poetry books instead of his usual chatter, and it was a sort of irritation that bothered him, worried him.

Enjolras opened the door for him, in a t-shirt and boxers – he hasn’t left the house all day. “I don’t think we’re very much like ourselves anymore,” he said.

Grantaire blinked. “Huh?”

“Ourselves. You know, us. Arguing more than we should, I think that’s what made me attracted to you, but we don’t argue anymore.”

“We can – argue if you want?” Grantaire offered, but he was thrown. No, they haven’t argued, not in these months, and Grantaire could acknowledge that he was treading carefully, like he thought that pushing too much might make Enjolras seek sex somewhere else.

“No, that’s not my point,” Enjolras said tiredly. “When we started all this – I thought that’s how it would be. I thought we would argue you a lot, and I would hurt you unintentionally and then we’re have spectacular make-up sex, and sometimes we’d hold hands while walking down the street, and I know that I was disillusioned about that, but you are allowed to stay the night. I’d – I like it when you’re there when I wake up.”

“Doesn’t seem like it,” Grantaire said.

Enjolras ran a hand through his hair. “How would you know,” he said, “You’ve only stayed once.”

This was unfamiliar footing, Grantaire was stumbling, lost in uncharted land. “It’s not protocol,” he managed to say, “For a quick fuck to stay the night.”

Enjolras sighed. “Grantaire, you were never a quick fuck. When I first kissed you – God, but you don’t even know how long it had been coming, do you? – when I kissed you, I thought I was starting something. Maybe not a relationship, not yet, but it was never casual sex. I’d been stalling for weeks, but you just have this habit of getting under my skin and it’s _appealing_.”

“But you didn’t want me there,” Grantaire said, closing his eyes. “I know, I saw your face, you didn’t want me there, you regretted it in the morning, I would regret it in the morning too-”

The shock of Enjolras grabbing his arm forced his eyes open, and suddenly Enjolras was very close. Too close. “Not regret,” Enjolras said softly, “Bliss. Happiness. Then you ran out, and I figured I was wrong, you didn’t want this to be a relationship, and that was sort of awful but I am a hard person to be in a relationship with. Grantaire, Jehan says you hate leaving every morning, and I hate it too, so why don’t you just stay?”

“I can’t,” Grantaire said distantly, “It wouldn’t be right.”

Enjolras pulled him close. “I want you to stay,” he said into Grantaire’s ear. “Preferably in the sort of way that I can kiss you in public and hold your hand and tell people I’ve got someone waiting for me back home when I travel.”

Grantaire realized dimly that he was crying, staining Enjolras’s shirt – his shirt – with tears. “I want that too,” he mumbled, and he could feel Enjolras’s cheek move when he smiled.

\----------

They hold hands when they walk, now. They argue again, and neither can deny that their months of ceasefire had been wrong, and they banter just for the hell of it, because they can.

They get into fights, serious ones, ones where Grantaire is drunk and Enjolras is overworked, ones where Enjolras places things above their relationship and ones where Grantaire doesn’t treat it like a relationship (because sometimes he’s still on uneven footing).

They have fights so big that their friends cower, fighters where they both doubt things can be sewn together, but Grantaire looked at it like this: at least they have something to try and mend.


End file.
